WalkingCarpet:In other news, false arrests and harassment of innocent civilians to increase by a brazillion percent.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that warrantless use of thermal imaging cameras when used to see if a house is emitting too much heat (indicating a grow operation) is a 4th Amendment violation. Does the NYPD really think the warrantless use of terahertz scanning technology to detect metal items hidden in people's clothing is constitutional?

Not to make this a gun argument (I know, too late) but it is the very mindset that rabidly encroaches on what many may call their Second Amendment Rights that feels that citizens really have no rights whatsoever.

Rincewind53:WalkingCarpet: In other news, false arrests and harassment of innocent civilians to increase by a brazillion percent.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that warrantless use of thermal imaging cameras when used to see if a house is emitting too much heat (indicating a grow operation) is a 4th Amendment violation. Does the NYPD really think the warrantless use of terahertz scanning technology to detect metal items hidden in people's clothing is constitutional?

The NYPD doesn't really care what any authority other than the Mayor of New York says.

I'll bet the same New Yorkers that support this device are the same people that have a problem with Sheriff Joe asking folks immigration status. both essentially the same, but one uses tech and another uses common sense. See gun, stop, frisk and ask for CHL license. See hispanic in border area breaking some law, stop, ask for residency license.

AbbeySomeone:What are the health risks associated with this type of device?

Greatly increased risk of Sudden Non-White Death Syndrome, for one.

And for another, press releases that read something like this:"The device indicated that the subject may have been carrying a high-power firearm. The risk to our officers was too great, so they had to eliminate the perceived threat before it could become a real threat."whenever the NYPD puts a litterer or a jaywalker down like a rabid dog.

WSJ article: "Officials said in its current form, the machine could be mounted on a truck and deployed to sites identified as prone to gun violence."

Same article says this boxy thing is a prototype that cost "multimillions" and the goal is something small enough for cops to wear on their belts. Also, there are no plans to deploy this technology yet. City is still talking to its lawyers about how to use it without running afoul of the 4th Amendment.

I would have figured out the legal aspect before sinking millions into the technology, but I don't have access to DoD funds.

Use of this device could be justified in a Terry stop, in which cops have a "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity." NYPD has been relying on Terry for its stop-and-frisk practice.

But scanning every passerby for weapons is never going to fly. "Reasonable suspicion" must be attached to a specific person for specific, articulable reason(s). Cops can't just say everyone in the neighborhood is suspicious because there have been shootings.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"not"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, unless you can find a way to do it with technology, except for infrared scanners, or backscatter x-rays, etc"

or"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."not"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, unless they are scary moooslems; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, unless it is horribly unpopular speech; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances unless the people in positions of power find it inconvenient."

or"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."not"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless the guns are scary looking."

TheJoe03:Honestly, did we ever? I was listening to some George Carlin this morning and he simply brought up the internment of Japanese-AMERICANS. Plenty of other obvious examples (slavery, lack of woman's suffrage, Alien and Sedition Acts, Andrew Jackson's presidency, the PATRIOT Act, etc etc etc).

It's sad isn't it? I know no one is gonna use their AR15 to "Water the tree of democracy" or any of that bullshiat, but a lot of gun enthusiasts do see their Second Amendment rights as a canary in a coal mine. Yeah, there are some nuts out there, but can it be said that they have no reason do resent what is and has gone on? The sickening authoritarian mindset is probably the least "American" value that one can come up with.

russsssman:I'll bet the same New Yorkers that support this device are the same people that have a problem with Sheriff Joe asking folks immigration status. both essentially the same, but one uses tech and another uses common sense. See gun, stop, frisk and ask for CHL license. See hispanic in border area breaking some law, stop, ask for residency license.

Concealed handgun licenses in New York are reserved for wealthy individuals with connections to politicians. Such individuals are already exempted from police searches for any reason.

Rincewind53:WalkingCarpet: In other news, false arrests and harassment of innocent civilians to increase by a brazillion percent.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that warrantless use of thermal imaging cameras when used to see if a house is emitting too much heat (indicating a grow operation) is a 4th Amendment violation. Does the NYPD really think the warrantless use of terahertz scanning technology to detect metal items hidden in people's clothing is constitutional?

Yeah in light of the ruling the feds just laid down about the program, I think this will go nowhere.

Weaver95:that's ok, I wasn't using my freedom anyways. I wonder if you can sterilize people with this thing? crank it up, zap sperm from 10 meters out and go cruising around the streets with it.

It appears to be a passive device, like a thermal imaging camera but looking at a different section of the electromagnetic spectrum. The privacy concerns are valid, but the only health risk is an indirect one from high-velocity lead poisoning.

Sales of a new product to skyrocket. Its a piece of metal in a gun shape. Used to harass the fark out of the police scanners and the more skilled individuals can place it into unsuspecting peoples pockets or purses.

/Oh the bump and stuff(opposite of the bump and pull) on the subway is going to be that much more fun.

When I read something in a gun thread that is in all caps I automatically translate it in my head to I HAVE NOTHING WORTHWHILE TO ADD TO THE DISCUSSION BUT FEEL VERY STRONGLY ABOUT THIS. I also picture people in the politics threads as kittens chasing balls of yarn. It helps me get through the day.

Ok, if we have to get hypothetical. They're testing out their IR equipment, see someone wandering around a junkyard. Cop knows it's closed, the owner is out of town, and that it's plastered with no trespassing signs. The cop knows it's trespassing and calls it in. He could not have known about it without using the IR device.

Does the trespassing (let's assume it's criminal) charge get thrown out as a violation of the 4th?

Why do they need to violate the 4th amendment to test their equipment? Can they not view their own police department to test it out? Also, the criminal, if detected wouldn't be able to use a 4th amendment defense because it was not his property that was violated, however the owner should be able to sue the department for the infringement.

You Idiots:You liberalsLeftists are getting exactly the police state you deservedeeply desire, have planned for, and have been building for over 100 years.

The current batch of online neo-Progressive shiat-disturbers are merely the latest in a long line of criminals. They may not all be aware of the history of their own movement, but this police-state agenda goes way back.

LasersHurt:redmid17: LasersHurt: redmid17: how do you think it would be if it could change the overarching government limitations pretty much whenever you want?

I don't know what you're implying, any time you get a simple majority you rewrite the world? Of course there should be limits on major changes, but those could easily require significant support to do. You can't just assume it would be shiatty because that supports your argument.

Okay then you're government is no longer agile and you are undermining your own point.

I think the case is more that you've set an arbitrary definition of agile right around "wherever makes my point correct."

It seems you're under the impression that we work for our government and not the other way around.

LasersHurt:tgambitg: LasersHurt: redmid17: Gee, you mean that the court decided not to address a hypothetical in a decision?

Look at those goalposts go. All I said was that I think this would merit review separate from that decision. Chill out.

Re: everyone else - I don't want a government limited by decisions made long ago. I want one that's wise and agile enough to make the nation better.

A government agile enough to make things better is one that is agile enough to make things worse and slip into tyranny in the blink of an eye. The restrictions put in place are there to prevent that from happening.

To prevent good governance?

People far smarter than you wrote the document. They knew what they were doing. Let's leave it at that.

Our elected officials justify violating our rights and privacy on the grounds that some people are criminals.

Ok, fine. From now on, the financial information of all elected officials shall be complete open to the public. Every single farking transaction, no exception. Because some politicians have been known to take bribes. And since police officers hold a position of power, we have to be certain they are above repoach. So their financial information shall be public, too. This is fully justifiable because there have been instances of police corruption.

LasersHurt:redmid17: LasersHurt: redmid17: Your Boobies more or less said it. No reason to type that if you don't believe it.

That's kind of absurd, isn't it? "It means what I think it means! Why did you type it if it doesn't mean what I think it means?"

Not anymore than you typing it in the first place with zero context or further explanation in a thread where it's grossly obvious that rights would be violated.

Honestly I think I just like stirring up shiat about peoples' rights.

If this was used in places where carrying handguns is illegal, then fark the rights. You's a criminal. Everyone else walks by untouched.

I get that the idea of proactively looking for criminals is a violation of a strict and absolute interpretation of "search" rights. I don't fail to understand that. I just don't really care that much.

So my initial assertion that you aren't very good at the whole constitutional aspect of life was right? I don't particularly care for law breakers either, but if police or other government officials can arbitrarily define who receives due process it will be abused.

Silverstaff:Rincewind53: WalkingCarpet: In other news, false arrests and harassment of innocent civilians to increase by a brazillion percent.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that warrantless use of thermal imaging cameras when used to see if a house is emitting too much heat (indicating a grow operation) is a 4th Amendment violation. Does the NYPD really think the warrantless use of terahertz scanning technology to detect metal items hidden in people's clothing is constitutional?

The NYPD doesn't really care what any authority other than the Mayor of New York says.

Considering that the NYPD actively works with and in conjunction with the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF etc and has officers working overseas I would imagine they get their marching orders from much higher up than just Bloomberg.

This is the same dept that thinks it has the authority to walk up to any individual on the streets of NY and frisk them without probable cause. They actively argue that this is a needed crime stopping tool.

They were getting heat from the pot smokers so Cuomo decided to give them shelter by offering to decrim small amounts (which in NYC is already a non arrestable offense). The police were finding people with weed on them during these stop and frisks. The issue is that Terry stops only allow an officer to check for WEAPONS everything else is off limits. They were basically forcing people to turn out their pockets, if you had weed they would arrest you for having weed in public which is arrestable vs. a bench ticket for simple possession. That quietly went away and the NYPD continued their stop and frisk.

How anyone can look at stop and frisk and not call it unconstitutional is BEYOND me. It is the very epitome of unlawful search. Walking down the street minding your own business and the police jump out and throw you against the wall and tell you to empty your pockets. The police command that authorized this should all be put behind bars for the 1000s of civil rights violations.

The NYPD is where laws and procedures are tired and honed before being exported to police dept all over the country.

Ivo Shandor:Weaver95: that's ok, I wasn't using my freedom anyways. I wonder if you can sterilize people with this thing? crank it up, zap sperm from 10 meters out and go cruising around the streets with it.

It appears to be a passive device, like a thermal imaging camera but looking at a different section of the electromagnetic spectrum. The privacy concerns are valid, but the only health risk is an indirect one from high-velocity lead poisoning.

You could in effect blind them by radiating in the same band in which they are looking.

Also, wet clothes would defeat this system, as would clothing made out of metal fibers like lamé.

Plus, you could introduce a *HUGE* number of false positives by simply arranging metal-containing articles like a cellphone and a pen or small flashlight into a "gun like" configuration,

Another thing to consider is that the waves used can penetrate plastics. A gun like a Glock, without the magazine inserted into it, isn't going to look like a gun, just a rectangular blob that could be any number of legal objects.

Ohlookabutterfly:King Something: King Something: AbbeySomeone: What are the health risks associated with this type of device?

Greatly increased risk of Sudden Non-White Death Syndrome, for one.

And for another, press releases that read something like this:"The device indicated that the subject may have been carrying a high-power firearm. The risk to our officers was too great, so they had to eliminate the perceived threat before it could become a real threat."whenever the NYPD puts a litterer or a jaywalker down like a rabid dog.

Just realized a third risk:

Combining the first two risks with the NYPD's extreme hatred of Occupiers:"The scanners indicated that several protesters may have been carrying concealed firearms and their behavior indicated they were about to brandish their weapons and open fire. Our officers' orders were to maintain the peace at the protests and defend themselves with any amount of force they deemed necessary, including deadly force; they were not sent in as an execution squad or to quell a civilian uprising of people protesting against the NYPD's most generous donors, our officers were just following orders.

"The fact that well over 95% of the dozens of persons killed in the crossfire and 85% of the thousands arrested were black or Hispanic is purely coincidental; there was a white male among the deceased and not all white arrestees were released without charges, so the NAACP, the ACLU and other civil rights groups claiming this was a case of ethnic cleansing are the real racists."

Thats there is a whole lot of "all whites are racists" butthurt, man. Don't you know the three most beautiful words in the english language are "I forgive you"? Stop perpetuating that ridiculous victim mindset and get on with your life.

I was going for the "The NYPD are a bunch of racist assholes" angle. If you doubt my word, look up Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima or Sean Bell.

Or the cop who was driving drunk and ran over and killed a pregnant Hispanic woman, her two kids and her unborn child. He got convicted on all counts but his sentences were served concurrently instead of consecutively, and he was eligible for parole about halfway through his sentence; had the roles been reversed and the pregnant Hispanic woman run over the cop while driving drunk, she would have long since been executed.

Rincewind53:WalkingCarpet: In other news, false arrests and harassment of innocent civilians to increase by a brazillion percent.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that warrantless use of thermal imaging cameras when used to see if a house is emitting too much heat (indicating a grow operation) is a 4th Amendment violation. Does the NYPD really think the warrantless use of terahertz scanning technology to detect metal items hidden in people's clothing is constitutional?

'm with you on this one, the bright line for what constitutes a search has always been "in plain view" so using magnifying optics to peer into a place is okay since you could already see what was thee and the person only had to draw a curtain to protect their privacy. However using microphones or other devices to hear what you otherwise could not hear is not okay because the person, in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, can unwittinglyhave that privacy breached. That's the logic they applied to the use of thermal scanners, seeing into the IR is not "plain" sight, so no go without a warrant.

This has GOT to fall into the same category, even with the reduced expectation of privacy that applies while in public. I assume the NYPD will claim they only use this device when they already have the level of "reasonable suspicion" that would allow them to do a Terry stop, but we've seen how wantonly they abuse that already, so I think the courts will view this with a high degree of suspicion

NYPD has something like 35,000 officers. That's bigger than the population of a lot of small towns. There should be an independent 50-member force that arrests NYPD officers for violating people's rights.

King Something:King Something: AbbeySomeone: What are the health risks associated with this type of device?

Greatly increased risk of Sudden Non-White Death Syndrome, for one.

And for another, press releases that read something like this:"The device indicated that the subject may have been carrying a high-power firearm. The risk to our officers was too great, so they had to eliminate the perceived threat before it could become a real threat."whenever the NYPD puts a litterer or a jaywalker down like a rabid dog.

Just realized a third risk:

Combining the first two risks with the NYPD's extreme hatred of Occupiers:"The scanners indicated that several protesters may have been carrying concealed firearms and their behavior indicated they were about to brandish their weapons and open fire. Our officers' orders were to maintain the peace at the protests and defend themselves with any amount of force they deemed necessary, including deadly force; they were not sent in as an execution squad or to quell a civilian uprising of people protesting against the NYPD's most generous donors, our officers were just following orders.

"The fact that well over 95% of the dozens of persons killed in the crossfire and 85% of the thousands arrested were black or Hispanic is purely coincidental; there was a white male among the deceased and not all white arrestees were released without charges, so the NAACP, the ACLU and other civil rights groups claiming this was a case of ethnic cleansing are the real racists."

Thats there is a whole lot of "all whites are racists" butthurt, man. Don't you know the three most beautiful words in the english language are "I forgive you"? Stop perpetuating that ridiculous victim mindset and get on with your life.

WalkingCarpet:And if they're going to frisk someone that they think has a concealed weapon you can bet it's not going to be a "Hello sir, how is your day going? Mind if we ask you a few questions?" kind of a stop.

Depending on what neighborhood you're in, you weren't going to get those kinds of stops anyway.

russsssman:I'll bet the same New Yorkers that support this device are the same people that have a problem with Sheriff Joe asking folks immigration status. both essentially the same, but one uses tech and another uses common sense. See gun, stop, frisk and ask for CHL license. See hispanic in border area breaking some law, stop, ask for residency license.

You know things are nutty when Sheriff Joe is cited as a bastion of common sense.

Why exactly is NYC so authoritarian? How can you elect Guiliani and Bloomberg back to back? At least a place like San Francisco, which has some zany laws, is still a chill liberal city that doesn't treat it's citizens like prisoners. I mean, is that racist stop and frisk program still happening? Can you still get arrested for marijuana possession? Can a New Yorker explain what the deal is? Reminds me of France, a supposed liberal land that has some messed up, draconian laws (ie weird detainment rules and a strong anti-drug stance).

King Something:AbbeySomeone: What are the health risks associated with this type of device?

Greatly increased risk of Sudden Non-White Death Syndrome, for one.

And for another, press releases that read something like this:"The device indicated that the subject may have been carrying a high-power firearm. The risk to our officers was too great, so they had to eliminate the perceived threat before it could become a real threat."whenever the NYPD puts a litterer or a jaywalker down like a rabid dog.

Just realized a third risk:

Combining the first two risks with the NYPD's extreme hatred of Occupiers:"The scanners indicated that several protesters may have been carrying concealed firearms and their behavior indicated they were about to brandish their weapons and open fire. Our officers' orders were to maintain the peace at the protests and defend themselves with any amount of force they deemed necessary, including deadly force; they were not sent in as an execution squad or to quell a civilian uprising of people protesting against the NYPD's most generous donors, our officers were just following orders.

"The fact that well over 95% of the dozens of persons killed in the crossfire and 85% of the thousands arrested were black or Hispanic is purely coincidental; there was a white male among the deceased and not all white arrestees were released without charges, so the NAACP, the ACLU and other civil rights groups claiming this was a case of ethnic cleansing are the real racists."